The Coin

Look at this coin. 

Go ahead, take it, hold it.

It is made of pure silver. Can you see how old it is? 

The image that is stamped on the front is the head of an emperor who lived more than two thousand years ago. 

Do you want to hear the story of the coin?

It starts with a Voice.  

***

In the beginning, long before the coin was a coin, before even the smallest part of the coin existed, that Voice spoke.

The Voice spoke, and time began.

***

Imagine pressing the button on a stopwatch and the watch starts ticking. 

Before the Voice spoke, time was not ticking. 

When the Voice spoke, the watch started ticking, and that is how time began.

When the Voice spoke, a very small seed appeared, so tiny that you could almost not see it, not even with a magnifying glass, and what would become the coin was somewhere within that seed, along with everything else, including what would eventually become you and me and that fat cat (you know the one) and the mouse that the fat cat chases but can never catch, because that cat is too fat to catch mice, which is good for the mouse.

We were all together inside that very small seed. Can you imagine? No? It's really hard to imagine, but that's how it was. Everything was crammed together tight inside that small seed, which made everything very hot. Yes, even hotter than how you feel right now.

The reason you feel so hot is that you have a fever. It's a pretty high fever, so you are feeling very hot. Inside the seed was the hottest fever ever, and it got so hot that suddenly there was a huge explosion, and the bang when the seed exploded was the biggest bang ever.

Except, no one was there to hear it.

***

Inside the seed was a lot of very tiny puzzle pieces that needed to be put together to eventually make you and me and the fat cat and the mouse, and the coin. Until we were put together there was no one there to hear the bang and feel the heat.

All those very tiny puzzle pieces spilled out of the seed when it exploded. For a long time, they whirled and swirled and twirled around each other and then they came together into huge balls of fire, called stars. Each star was like our sun, except, in those days, most of them were much bigger and hotter.

And one day, two of those hot suns crashed into each other, and when they crashed into each other they made a heat so great that gold and other precious metals were forged, including the silver that would become the coin.

When those two hot suns crashed into each other and made the silver that would make the coin, they also made all sorts of other stuff and they flung it all far out into empty space.

After a very long time, some of that stuff came together, whirling and swirling and twirling, and that's the stuff that made our sun and all the planets, including our earth, which is the solid ground we stand on when we look up at the blue sky to see our nice, warm, yellow sun.

***

Deep in the ground, where it is always dark, the silver cooled down and waited and waited and waited.

Silver doesn't think in the way you and I do, but somehow, in the ways of silver, it knew that the Voice wanted it for something important. Don't ask me how it knew, because I don't know how the Voice speaks to silver, but the silver knew, and the silver was waiting.

Then, one day, miners dug deep down into the ground and they found the silver and brought it up into the sunlight.

***

First, the silver became a necklace that a rich man gave to his wife. 

He didn't do that because he loved his wife, he just wanted to show off how rich he was, that he was so rich that he could afford to put a silver necklace around his wife's neck. 

But she did love the silver necklace. 

Actually, she loved the silver necklace much more than she loved her husband because he was a mean man, much older than her, and kind of ugly. But at least he was rich and could give her a silver necklace, she thought. 

And she stuck her chin up so that her neck would look longer, and so that the silver necklace would gleam and glitter in the sunlight so that all the other wives would be envious.

***

Then, much later, there was a famine in the land, and the great-great-great-great-grand-daughter of that woman gave up the necklace that had been passed down, mother to daughter, gave it up to the priests of that land, and it was melted down along with silver from a lot of other jewelry and made into a silver figure that was placed in a temple for people to pray to so that the famine would end, because the people of that land, at that time, didn't understand about the Voice, so they thought that praying to figures made of silver or gold could open the skies so the rain would come, so the plants would grow, so the cows and the sheep could eat, so the people would be well-fed and safe and happy and loved (which is not true, but that is what they believed, not because they were stupid or mean, just because they didn't know any better.)

The silver that would one day become the coin was shaped by a silversmith into one of the eyes of the figure that the people in that land prayed to, and the silver watched, in the way silver watches (which is not the way you and I watch), while people prayed in front of the figure. The silver couldn't really do anything about all the things the people prayed about, so it just sat there, a silver eye, watching.

Until one day, soldiers from another land came and tore down that temple and took away all the treasures, including the silver figure. The last thing the people prayed about was for the silver figure to save them from those foreign soldiers. But the silver eye could only watch and wait, and the soldiers came anyway, and the people were not saved.

The soldiers from that foreign land had their own figures to pray to, so they melted down the silver figure, and can you guess what they made from the silver?

That's right, they made coins.

***

The silver might have thought (if it could think the way you and I do), Finally! Now it will happen, this is it, here it is, this is the coin the Voice has been speaking about.

But the silver would have been wrong. It wasn't time yet. Sure, the silver was being made into coins, but not this coin. Instead, the silver was spread out over more than one hundred coins, little bits of the silver in each of those coins, which were called 'shekels', a tiny bit of the silver here, and a tiny bit there, spread out into more than a hundred silver shekels.

***

Then, one day, there was a really strong man with long, long hair. Yes, he had a long beard too, but it was his hair that everyone noticed. He had never cut his hair in his whole life, so it was really, really long, and he was very, very strong. He caused a lot of trouble for the people in the land, going around tearing things up. So they gave a woman eleven-hundred silver shekel coins to cut off that strong man's hair because they knew that without his long hair, he would become weak. 

How did they know that?

They knew that because the strong man was silly enough to tell the woman. That wasn't very smart, was it?

So, she took the eleven-hundred silver shekel coins in payment, and she cut off the strong man's hair, and then he became weak, and they hauled him off, and they chained him up in their temple, so they could tease him for being so weak.

Except, he knew how to hear the Voice, and how to ask the Voice for help, so he asked for one last favor, to be strong again, just long enough that he could cause some more trouble. And the Voice granted him that last favor and he burst out of his chains and tore down that people's temple, all by himself, that's how strong he was.

***

Later, that same woman had a son. It was the son of the long-haired strong man. And one day that son stole the eleven-hundred silver shekel coins his mom had taken in payment to cut off his father's hair and make him weak.

When she realized her silver shekel coins were gone, at first it made the woman sad, and then she got mad, and she cursed whoever had stolen her coins, not knowing that it was her own son that she cursed.

The son felt guilty, and probably a bit scared of the curse too, so he returned the eleven-hundred silver shekel coins to his mom.

Now she was happy again, and to celebrate, she gave two hundred of those silver shekel coins to a silversmith to make another figure they could pray to. And, guess what, the silver that would one day become the coin was part of those two hundred shekels.

If the silver could sigh (the way you and I sigh), it might have sighed then, because now it was right back where it had been before, part of a silver figure that people prayed to. This time, it was shaped into an ear. 

So the silver listened, in the way silver can listen, to the people praying, but it couldn't do anything about whatever they prayed about, because it was just a silver ear.

***

More than a thousand years passed, the silver was melted down and made into many things, over and over again, but finally, finally, it was made into the coin that you see here.

This coin is of a kind called 'drachma.' Actually it is worth four drachmas, so the people of the land called this coin a 'tetradrachm' because the word for 'four' in that language is 'tetra'.

Being a coin, it was passed around from one person to another as they bought stuff, and paid people, and bought more stuff, and paid more people, and one time a widow who had ten silver coins lost this coin, but she looked everywhere and she was able to find it again, and so it went on, one thing after another, until one day the coin was in a fisherman's coin-purse (that's a little leather pouch that people would use to carry coins, back at that time.)

The fisherman and his cousin were sitting in a boat on a lake, fishing. The fisherman with the coin in the coin-purse didn't know it, but his cousin was a bad man, who wanted to hurt the fisherman, even though he was his cousin. When a fish bit on the hook, and the fisherman turned his back on his cousin, who was secretly his enemy, that enemy-cousin hit the fisherman on the back of his head with a big stick of wood and pushed him out of the boat into the water.

As the fisherman sank down in the water, the fish he had caught slipped off the hook and being a curious fish it immediately forgot all about the hook and swam next to the fisherman who was sinking deeper and deeper. Then the fish saw something shiny that fell out of the sinking man, and because fishes like shiny things (which is why they bite on shiny fish-hooks) the fish snapped up that shiny thing, which was this coin.

So now, the coin was in the mouth of the fish, and it got stuck there because it was a little too big for that small fish to swallow.

***

There was a man walking the Earth in those days who was actually none other than the Voice. People didn't realize that this man was the Voice, not even His friends, not at first anyway.

One of the friends of the man who was the Voice figured they should pay the temple tax because the priests had been bothering him about paying it. So, he asked for help from the man who was the Voice, and the man who was the Voice told his friend to go down to the lake, catch a fish, and that he would find a valuable coin in the mouth of the fish, worth enough so that he could pay the temple tax for both of them.

And the friend did as he was told. This was his greatest strength, that he had a strong and simple mind, that he heard the Voice, and that he did what the Voice said.

He caught the fish, opened the mouth of the fish, and there it was: the coin.

***

You and I know how the coin got there, all the way from when the Voice spoke and time began, and the seed exploded and made the big bang, and the two hot suns crashed into each other and forged the silver, and the silver went into the earth, and the miners dug up the silver, and the silver was made into a necklace, then a silver eye, then shekels that paid for the strong man to be made weak, then a silver ear, and after a long time the silver was made into the coin that dropped out of the sinking man's coin-purse into the mouth of the fish.

And we know that since the Voice spoke in the beginning and kept speaking all along the way, it was only natural that the man who was the Voice would know to tell his friend exactly what to do. After all, since He was the Voice, He, the Voice, had made it all happen, every step of the way.

By this time, the friend of the man who was the Voice had experienced a lot of strange and wonderful things, called miracles, just from hanging around the man who was the Voice, so the friend was both surprised and not surprised to find the coin in the mouth of the fish. 

He shrugged and thought, just one more unusual thing, it's kind of becoming a habit. 

And so he took the coin from the mouth of the fish and went and paid the temple tax for himself and for the man who was the Voice.

***

Now, there was another man who spent time with the man who was the Voice. He was supposed to be a friend, but secretly he had decided that he would betray the man who was the Voice. So, he went to the priests in the temple and asked how much they would give him if he betrayed the man who was the Voice, so the priests could arrest Him.

The priests gave the betrayer thirty silver coins out of the chest where people had paid their temple tax. And, wouldn't you know it, this coin that you are holding was one of those thirty pieces of silver.

Of course, the Voice knew that this would happen, and had made sure it would happen, that this coin would end up in the mouth of the fish and would be used to pay His own temple tax, which was used to pay the man who would betray Him.

Later, the betrayer felt very guilty and returned all the coins to the priests in the temple. But it was too late. They had already arrested the man who was the Voice, even though he was completely innocent and good, the most innocent and good man who ever lived.

The priests used the silver coins to buy a plot of land where they buried poor people who didn't have enough money to pay for their own funerals.

***

The man who sold that plot of land to the priests went home and put the coins into his chest.

But there was a hole in the chest because he sometimes kept cheese and bread in the chest next to the coins, and the mice had figured that out, and they loved cheese, so they had gnawed the hole in the chest, and they snuck in to steal the cheese, and when they did, they happened to drag this coin out with them, and they hid it in their mouse hole.

And there it stayed, for almost two thousand years, until people who were digging for treasures found the coin.

And one of those people was your great-grandfather, and he kept it, and that's how come this coin made it all the way from being silver forged when two hot suns crashed into each other to where it is now — this coin in your hand.

***

That was a long story, and I can tell you are tired, and that is good because you need to sleep.

Now, go ahead and hold on tight to the coin, make a fist, just like that, with the coin inside your fist, and close your eyes, and listen for the Voice with an open mind and with love in your heart. 

The Voice will whisper that you are loved — because you are. 

You are loved so much. 

As you sleep, the Voice will let you send all of the heat from your fever into this coin, and then your fever will go away, and you will wake up tomorrow, all well again.

I promise.